Steve Taylor Breaks New Ground As Christian Musician

Linda Wertheimer: Christian music, a
growing industry who feels as much at home in Nashville as the Grand Old
Opry does, is not all sweetness and light. Like the rest of the music made
in Nashville, Christian music comes in all forms and some of the
contemporary variety sounds suspiciously like rock and roll, like heavy
metal, like really raucous. Steve Taylor is that kind of Christian music
singer/songwriter. I asked him how it's possible to hear the word over the
music.

Steve Taylor: Well, I suppose rock and roll
is the first thing you hear just because, you know, you put on a CD and
that's what jumps out at you. But actually, I make no bones about the fact
that it's Christian music, that it's inspired because of my faith.

ST: [singing] "Once upon an average
morning / an average boy was born for the second time / Thrown upon the
altar there / he whispered up the prayer he'd kept hid inside"

LW: The finish line has, I must say, a kind
of surprising lyric. It's about the resurrection.

ST: That's right. Actually, I wrote it for
some friends of mine that had been Christians for a while and they were just
starting to lose their way, just getting off track, you know, and this is a
song saying that, you know, to press on, God's waiting there at the end of
it all.

ST: [singing] "And I saw you brush away
rocks / and I saw you pull up your socks / and I saw you out of the blocks
/ for the finish line.

LW: I have to ask you this--I mean, this is
a lyric that is a little tough to take, I would think, if you're--you know,
if you're used to sort of the majesty of the Easter pageants--"I saw you
brush away the rocks, I saw you pull up your socks, I saw you out of the
blocks for the finish line."

ST: Yeah, it's just sort of the imagery of,
you know, being in a race. I think the Apostle Paul actually used that same
imagery, of running the good race, and I think a lot of times,
unfortunately, our paradigm for Christian music has more to do with maybe, I
don't know, singers from 20 to 30 years ago instead of, you know, going back
to the Biblical ways of communicating.

LW: Well I'd say more to do with
sweetness, perhaps, or even respectfulness, which is missing in your
music.

ST: Well, yeah, and that sort of makes
sense, too, because you certainly wouldn't think of Jesus as sweet or
respectful. I mean, those are two words that I wouldn't classify at all
when you look at the way he dealt with the Pharaohcies and when you look at
the way he lived his life. You know, this sort of rugged guy trudging
across the countryside. And I suppose that's one of the--the image
problems, that Christian music has to deal with, that is, that it's being
caricaturized into that sort of sweet, whitebread caricature, because
that's the one thing that it doesn't have in common with most other forms
of music, I guess, and that way people can blow it off, which I think some
people would just as soon that it didn't even exist.

LW: Here's a song that just, right on the
face of it, the title of it is "Jesus is for Losers." I get what you're
talking about there, but I mean, I would think that would be a title that
would kind of--you could go both ways on that. It could make you mad.

ST: Yeah, it could, and you know, it did
make a few people mad. I go back to the subversive communication in the
Bible, you know. So many times Jesus would say something to get people's
attention. He knew that he had to engage their minds as well as their
hearts, and so a song title like "Jesus is for Losers" hopefully makes you
want to read what the song is saying, and of course, the song says in
summary of what Jesus said--I didn't come for those who were well. I came
for those who need a doctor. All of us are losers--that's why we need the
Saviour.

LW: It's not uncommon for poets, writers,
and certainly songwriters, who are not Christian musicians or not involved
in Christian music, like the Beatles, for example, to use imagery that's
Biblical. What makes the difference? What is the difference between a
person who is a Christian musician and a person who puts Biblical imagery
and Biblical ideas go into their songs, and somebody who does it anyway, as
people have in literature for time out of mind?

ST: Well, I think the reason so many
people use it is because it's always been, the Bible has been sort of one
of our touchstones, you know.

LW: Common language.

ST: That's right, it's a common language.
I think the main difference is actually, there's self-expression that goes
into what we do as Christian music, but more importantly, it's bigger than
that. It's also spiritual expression, it's God expression. We're trying to
communicate something higher than just ourselves, you know, our own point
of view. And that, I think, is also one of the stumbling blocks. That's,
you know, why sometimes Christian music doesn't necessarily communicate to
the culture at large is because gospel music, which is what I like to call
it, the word gospel means "good news," but it's also really, really bad
news, because it goods news in the fact, you know, Jesus can save you.
It's bad news for the same reason--him saying "I am the way, the truth,
and the light, and no man comes to the Father but through me." That
exclusivity that he talks about, "I'm it," you know, "I'm the way to God,"
is a very offensive thing to society and certainly! Even more so, to
modern society--we don't like the idea of one truth. So, I can't ever see
Christian music becoming, you know, as popular as mainstream music because
at its essence, there is this very offensive message, really.

LW: Contemporary Christian artist Steve
Taylor, who lives and records his music here in Nashville. His latest
album is called Squint.